Rethinking Heritage A guide to help make your site more dementia friendly Visiting heritage sites is one of the top activities that people living with dementia enjoy doing. The importance of heritage sites increases as we get older, as a place to relax, recover and engage with the environment around us. This guide has been produced to help heritage sites improve their accessibility and work towards becoming more dementia-friendly.

Dementia-friendly media guide The Alzheimer’s Society has worked with Channel 4 to develop this guide offering practical advice on how the industry can better support and include people living with dementia.

Guide to Dementia Friendly Screenings

Dementia friendly screenings aim to make cinema a key part of a dementia friendly community by providing an accessible, fun and inclusive experience. This enables people living with dementia, their families and carers to attend the cinema in a safe and welcoming environment.This guide from the Alzheimer’s Society was published in October 2017.

Using dance to re-energise and inspire

Dancing Moments, a creative South Asian dance participation project, has used dance as a tool for communication and improving physical fitness, to restore wellbeing for people in the early stages of dementia and their carers.

Led by Bisakha Sarker, artistic director of Chaturangan, Dancing Moments was conceived and delivered In partnership with Akademi South Asian Dance UK and Arts 4 Dementia. Sessions were delivered at The Bull Theatre in Barnet, by a team of professional South Asian dancers and musicians.

Here are a selection of apps to engage and stimulate the brain and books/studies on artistic stimulation for dementia:

Apps:

Alzheimer’s Apps is for iPhone, iPod touch or iPad and identifies other apps that could help to improve the quality of life for the person with dementia. This includes apps that could calm or engage the person. The goal is to improve the interaction with the carer and any other family visitors. This programme only identifies apps that have a significant chance of success and a peer review system is available within the app that allows for feedback to be shared with others about the experiences with certain apps.

The Brain Jog is a free app for iPhone, iPad, or iPod. It was developed by researchers at Queen’s University Belfast as part of a larger study looking at ‘brain training’ and the ability to prevent cognitive decline/dementia. App is designed for people 50 years of age and older.

Books:

Abraham, Ruth, When Words Have Lost Their Meaning: Alzheimer’s Patients Communicate Through Art, Abingdon, Greenwood Press, 2004, hardcover and ebook.

De Bono, Norman, ‘Neuroscientist touts arts as way to stave off dementia’, in London Free Press, London, London Free Press, 2010. http://www.ifpress.com/news/london/2010/11/03/15950816.html. Professor Charles DeCarli of University of California claims that living a creative life is also important for defending against dementia.

Elliott, Jenny, Grant, David and Maroison, Sue, ‘Creative Ageing: A Practical Exploration of the Arts in the Healthcare of Older People’, Belfast, Chagning Ageing Partnership, 2010.

Fordham, Kathy, Hill, Vicky and Wynn-Jones, Freya, ‘‘A whole month of pleasure’- making music on the South Downs’, in Journal of Dementia Care, 2010, Vol. 18/4, p. 28-30.